Application of Design of Experiment and Simulation Methods to Liquid Chromatography Analysis of Topical HIV Microbicides Stampidine and HI443

摘要

This study is intended to determine if experimental design and Monte Carlo simulation methods can be utilized to optimize the liquid chromatography (LC) analysis of active molecules. The method was applied for the simultaneous analysis of two vaginal microbicides, stampidine (STP) and HI443 in bulk and nanoformulations. The Plackett-Burman design was used for screening; whereas, Box-Behnken design was used to evaluate the main and interaction effects of the selected factors on the responses, namely peak area of STP (Y1), HI443 (Y2), tailing of STP (Y3), and HI443 (Y4). The Monte Carlo simulation was applied to get the minimum defect rate of the process. The optimized LC conditions were found to be X1; flow rate: 0.6 mL/min, X2; injection volume: 18 μL, and X3; initial gradient acetonitrile ratio: 92% v/v with a minimal defect rate of 0.077%. The optimized method was applied to determine the percent encapsulation efficiency (%EE) and in vitro release profile of STP and HI443 from solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs). The % EE of STP and HI443 in SLNs was found to be 30.56 ± 9.44 and 94.80 ± 21.90% w/w, respectively, (n=3). It was observed that the release kinetics of STP followed the first order, whereas, HI443 followed the Peppas kinetic model in SLNs. The LC method was also applied for the estimation of molar extinction coefficients (ε270) of both drugs for the first time. The values were observed as 7,569.03 ± 217.96 and 17,823.67 ± 88.12 L/mol/cm for STP and HI443, respectively, (n=3). The results suggest that experimental design and Monte Carlo simulation can be effectively used to reduce the defect rate and to optimize the chromatographic conditions for the analysis of active drug molecules as applied in this study.